Justification of Ordained Office of Deacon Restricted to Qualified Males

Robert Cara, provost and professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, wrote this essay in support of a memorial asking the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church to restrict the ordained diaconate to qualified males; since 1972 the ARPC has let each local session decide.

His case rests on two lines of argument: detailed exegesis of the deacon passages, in which he reads the disputed “women” of 1 Timothy 3:11 as deacons’ wives and Phoebe in Romans 16:1 as a servant in the broad sense rather than an ordained deaconess, and the claim that the office carries a level of authority that brings 1 Timothy 2:12 into play.

An excursus on deaconesses in the early church finds separate, restricted female diaconates in the third and fourth centuries and concludes the historical evidence settles nothing for either side. One of the more thorough recent treatments of the women-and-the-diaconate question, published in Reformed Faith & Practice, the seminary’s journal.